Saying Social Media Listening is Important Isn’t Enough
November 12, 2009 by Chuck
Engaging in social media using a strategic approach is important. How you engage your audiences is important. Measurement of social media outcomes is important. Listening, the subject of many posts on this blog, is important. Guess what? That doesn’t matter. Just saying it’s important isn’t enough for it to resonate (read: pay for it) with your client/boss. Since we spend a lot of time talking about listening here, let’s use that as an example.
The folks who are living in the social media trenches know listening is important. We talk about it amongst ourselves often. What are the best tools? What are some common best practices? What we don’t spend nearly enough time talking about, however, is how to execute a listening program. Or, even more important, what are we hoping to achieve by listening. I’ve mentioned here, and elsewhere, about how traditional media monitoring is largely a tactical exercise within companies. The last thing we want is for social media to become the same. We do not want companies buying software and listening only for listening sake. While there is value in listening just to avoid a crisis, or protect brand reputation, there are plenty of other applications for listening that companies should consider. As an aside, from now on you’ll be seeing this blog refer to listening as “strategic listening.”
Since I said that talking about the importance of listening isn’t enough, what are some other applications beyond trying to protect brand reputation? Here are some thoughts:
—new product development/enhancement. Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology recently found that 20% of all tweets mention a brand. What does that mean for your company? Well, primarily it’s an opportunity for you to hear how customers feel about your product, but more importantly it’s a way for you hear how your product could be improved. Similarly, you never know what crazy product idea one of your consumers may mention in the social media sphere. Wouldn’t you want to be listening and have the ability to capitalize on that sort of intelligence? I know I would.
—customer service issues. Whether you are ready for full-time engagement or not, at least you can be aware of any potential customer service issues. Perhaps by listening for that kind of conversation you can executive a surgical air strike and engage (and fix), even if you aren’t willing to create your own content.
—new customer generation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a social media conversation take place where someone mentions a product, and then another person responds saying they need to check out X product/company. When I see that, my first question is always is that company listening to the social media conversation? If they are, that’s a person they could reach out to and convert into a possible sale. Again, this isn’t full engagement in social media. Think more surgical air strikes.
Nowhere in this post did I say use strategic listening for engagement. Sure, that’s ultimately where we’d like to see companies go, but we ought to understand that not everyone is going to get there (if they get there at all) at our pace. We need to comprehend that just because we understand the value, doesn’t mean our boss/clients do. Similarly, just because our culture is amenable to social media doesn’t mean our clients are ready to make that leap. What will make them leap more quickly? Start by showing them how it benefits the business, and not by showing them a bunch of statistics about the size of social media and how many companies are doing it.
Since listening is often where companies start in social media, think about how it will benefit the company (not necessarily toward engagement right away) and have a conversation. I’ll be curious to hear how it goes…